This Is the End by Stella Benson

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Mr. Russell got happily into the 'bus. He made the worst entrance
possible. His hat slipped crooked, he left one leg behind on the road,
and only retrieved it with the help of the conductor. Jay welcomed him
with a nod that was almost a bow, a remnant of her unprofessional past.

"Told you I'd come in this 'bus again," said Mr. Russell, sitting down in
the left-hand seat next to the door. I really don't know what would have
happened if that seat had been occupied. I suppose Mr. Russell would have
sat upon the occupier.

"A good many people like this service," said Jay; "it is considered very
convenient. How is your search going?"

"It hasn't begun yet," said Mr. Russell. "We haven't got within three
hundred miles of the House we're looking for."

"You know more or less where it is, then?" asked Jay, who sometimes
wanted to know this herself.

"I do know, but I don't know how I know, nor what I know."

"How funny that you--an Older and Wiser Man--should feel that sort of
knowledge," said Jay. As an afterthought she called him Sir.

The 'bus grew fuller, and only Jay's bell punctured the silence that
followed. A lady asked Jay to "set her down at Charing Cross Post
Office." "The 'bus stops there automatically, Madam," said Jay, and the
lady told her not to be impertinent.

Jay seemed a little subdued after this, and it was only after she had
stood for a minute or two on her platform in silence that she said to Mr.
Russell, "London seems dead to-day, doesn't it? Not even fog, only a
lifeless light. What's the use of daylight in London to-day? You know, I
don't live in London."

"No," said Mr. Russell, "where do you live?"

"London," replied Jay. "I mean my heart doesn't live in London mostly. I
think it lives very far away in the same sort of place as the place you
know without knowing how you know it. The happy shore of God Knows Where
must have a great population of hearts. To-day I hate London so that I
could tear it into pieces like a rag."

"You ought to start your 'bus on the search for the happy shore," said
Mr. Russell. "You'd find the track of my tyres before you. I b'lieve
you'd find the place."

"Well, that would be the only perfect Service," said Jay. "But I don't
believe the public would use the route much. I would go on and on, and
leave all old ruts behind. I would stop for no fares, even the sea should
not stop me. I would go on to the horizon to see if that secret look just
after sunset really means that the stars are just over the brink. Why do
people end themselves on a note of despair? I would choose that way of
perpetuating my Perfect Day. The police would see the top seats of the
'bus sticking out at low tide, and the verdict would be, 'Suicide while
of even more than usually unsound mind.'"

A 'bus has an unromantic voice. The bass is a snarl, and the treble is
made up of a shrill rattle. It was curious how this 'bus managed to
retain withal its fantastic atmosphere.

Mr. Russell asked presently, "Why are you a 'bus-conductor?"

"To get some money," replied the conductor baldly. "I want to find out
what is the attraction of money. Besides, if one talks such a lot as I
do, to do anything--however small--saves one from being utterly futile.
When I get to Heaven, the angels won't be able to say, 'Tush tush, you
lived on the charity of God.' That's what unearned money is, isn't it?
And what's the use of charity?"

"Do you ever get a day off?" asked Mr. Russell.

"Occasionally."

"Will you meet me on the steps of St. Paul's next Sunday at ten?"

"No, because I shall be at work next Sunday."

"Will you meet me the Sunday after that?"

"Yes," said Jay. The Family's theories on the bringing up of girls had
evidently been wasted on her.

"What's the use of looking for this girl?" she asked, after a round of
duty. "Why not leave her on her happy shore? Do you know, sir, I
sympathise enormously with that girl."

"I don't expect you would if you knew her," said Mr. Russell. "She must
be quite different from you, by what I hear from her relations. I think
she must be an aggressive, suffragetty sort of girl. Girls nowadays seem
to find running away from home a sufficient profession."

"You say that because you are so dreadfully much Older and Wiser," said
Jay. "Why are you looking for her, then?"

"I'm not," said Mr. Russell. "She is just a trespasser. I'm looking for
the place because I know I know it."

"I hope you'll never find it," said Jay crossly. She announced Ludgate
Circus in a startling voice, and ended the conversation.

She was tired because she had been up all night among distressed friends
in the Brown Borough. There had been a fight in Tann Street. Mrs.
O'Rourke had broken the face of little Mrs. Love. Mrs. Love had never
fought before; her fists were like lamb cutlets, and she had had a good
mother with non-combatant principles. All these things are drawbacks in
a Brown Borough argument. But Mrs. Love was a friend of Jay's, and I
don't think she had found that a drawback. Feverish discussions with
dreadfully impartial policemen, feverish drying of feverish tears,
feverish extracting of medicaments from closed chemists, and finally a
feverish triumph of words with which Jay capped Mrs. O'Rourke's triumph
of fists were the items in the sum of a feverish night. So Jay was tired.

* * * * *

Mr. Russell was too early for his business, and he went into St. Paul's
and sat on a seat far back.

St. Paul was an anti-saint, I think, who very badly needed to get married
and be answered back now and then. I believe it is possible that he was
unworthy of that great house called by his name. The gospel of a very
splendid detachment speaks within its walls, its windows turn inward, its
music sings to itself. Tossed City sinners go in and out, and pass, and
penetrate, but still the music dreams, and still the dim gold blinks
above their heads. A muffled God walks the aisles, and you, in the
bristling wilderness of chairs, can clutch at His skirts and never see
His eyes. Nothing comes forward from that altar to meet you. It is as if
He walked talking to Himself, and as if even His speech were lost in
those devouring spaces.

Mr. Russell sat near the door, and found only his thoughts and the
shuffle of seeking feet to keep him company.

"An Older and Wiser Man ..." he thought. "God forgive me for
letting it pass."

If he had thought it worth while to profess an "ism" at all, he would
have been a fatalist. He was the victim of an unwitty cynicism, and of a
heavy irresponsibility. He applied either "It isn't worth while" or "It
doesn't matter" to everything. He never expressed his thoughts to
himself--it was not worth while,--but I think he knew within himself
that life was made of paper, and thrown together in a crackling chaos.
There was no depth in anything, and a mere thought could slay the
highest thing in the world. The only thing that ever made his heart
laugh was the idea of fineness finding place in himself. A dream of
himself in a heroic light sometimes made him poke himself in the ribs,
and mock the farce of human vanity. He was like a man in a world that
lacked mirrors, a man who sees his dark deformed shadow on the sands,
and thinks it represents him fairly.

He was without self-consciousness, knowing that he was not worth his own
recognition. At home he often recited little confused poems of his own
composition to his Hound, and never noticed the surprise of the servants.
He never knew that in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Gustus and Kew he was
hardly allowed to utter three consecutive words, although, when he was
away from them, and especially when he was with the 'bus-conductor, he
felt a delightful lack of restraint.

As he sat down and looked at the far unanswering altar, he had two dim
thoughts. One was that a man might get Older and Wiser, without getting
old enough or wise enough to choose his road. The other was a question as
to whether it is ever really worth while to read what the signpost says.

From the moment when Mr. Russell left her 'bus, Jay became stupefied by
an invasion of the Secret World.

She gave the tickets and change with accuracy, she kept count of the
stream of climbers on to the top of the 'bus, she stilled the angry
whirlpool of people on the pavement for whom there was no room, she
dislodged passengers at the corners of their own streets--even that
gentleman (almost always to be found in an obscure corner of an
east-going 'bus) who had sunk into a sudden and pathetic sleep just when
his pennyworth of ride was coming to an end,--she received an unexpected
inspector with the smile that comes of knowing every passenger to be
properly ticketed; she even laughed at his joke. She weeded out the
Whitechapel Jewesses at the Bank, and introduced them to the Mile End
'buses. She handed out to them their sombre and insolent-looking babies,
and when one mother thanked her profusely in Yiddish, she replied,
"Bitte, bitte...." Yet all the while the wind blew to her old
remembrances of the low chimneys and the bending roofs of the House by
the Sea, and the smell of the high curving fields, and the shouting of
the sea. And all the while her hands must grope for the handle of the
heavy door, and her eyes must fill with blindness because of the
wonderful promise of distant cliffs with the sun on them, and because the
sea was so shining. And all the while her ears must strain to hear a
voice within the house....

It is a very great honour to be given two lives to live.

The monotonous journeys trod on each other's heels. Slowly the day
consumed itself. It grew dimmer and dimmer for Jay, though I have no
doubt that habit protected her, and that she behaved herself throughout
with commonplace correctness.

She found presently that the great weight of copper money was gone from
her shoulder, and that it was evening, and that Chloris was coming down
Mabel Place to meet her. Chloris was wagging her whole person from the
shoulder-blades backwards; she never found adequate the tail that had
originally been provided for that purpose. Jay stumbled up the step of
Eighteen Mabel Place, and found at last the path she wanted.

The path was one that had never been touched by a professional
pathmaker. Feet, not hands, had made it. The rocks impatiently thrust it
aside every little way, and here and there were steps up and down for no
reason except that the rock would have it so. The path chose its way so
that you might see the sea from every inch of it. The thundering
headlands sprang from Jay's left hand, and she could see the cliffs
written over with strange lines, and the shadow that they cast upon deep
water. It was the colour of a great passion, and against that colour pink
foxgloves bowed dramatically upon the fringe of space. The white gulls
were in the valleys of the sea. I wish colour could be built by words. I
wish I could speak colour to myself in the dark. I can never fill my eyes
full enough of the colour of the sea, nor my ears of the crying of the
seagulls. I am most greedy of these things, and take no thought for the
morrow, so that if my morrow dawns darkly I have nothing stored away to
comfort me.

The path joins the more civilised road almost at the door of the House by
the Sea. You tumble over a great round rock that still bears the marks
of the sea's fingers, and you are at the door.

The house was full of sunlight. Great panels of sunlight lay across the
air. The fingers of the honeysuckle in the rough painted bowl by the
window caught and held sunlight. In every room of the house you can
always hear the eternal march of the sea up and down the shore. Nothing
ever drowns that measured confusion. Sometimes the voices of friends
thread in and out of it, sometimes the dogs bark, or a coming meal clinks
in the stone passage, or you can catch the squealing of the children in
their baths, sometimes your heart stops beating to listen to the speech
of the ghosts that haunt the house, but no sound ever usurps the throne
of the sea.

They were all on the stairs, the Secret Friend and the children. They all
wore untidy clothes, and hard-boiled eggs bulged from their pockets. The
Secret Friend has red hair, you might call its colour vulgar. But Jay
likes it very much. He hardly ever sits still, you can never see him
think, he has a way of answering you almost before you have finished
speaking. His mind always seems to be exploring among words, and
sometimes you can hear him telling himself splendid sentences without
meaning. For this reason everything connected with him has a name, from
his dog, which is called Trelawney, to the last cigarette he smokes at
night, which is called Isobel. This trick Jay has imported into her own
establishment: she has an umbrella called Macdonald, and a little
occasional pleurisy pain under one rib, which she introduces to the
Family as Julia.

The children in the house were just those very children that every woman
hopes, or has hoped, to have for her own.

They were just starting for a walk, and the Secret Friend was
finishing a story.

"How can you remember things that happened--I suppose--squillions of
years ago," said the eldest child. "You tell them as if they happened
yesterday. Doesn't it seem as if all the happiest things happened
yesterday?"

"To me it seems that they will happen to-morrow," said the Secret Friend.
"But then there is so little difference between yesterday and to-morrow.
How can you tell which is which? Only clocks and calendars are silly
enough to tread on the tail of a little space between sunrise and sunset
and call it to-day. How do you know which way up time is happening?"

"Because yesterday the sun set, and we went to bed," said the
youngest child.

"I think to-morrow is a little person in dark clothes watching and
listening," said the eldest child. "And to-day is Cinderella, all shiny
and beautiful until twelve o'clock strikes."

"All yesterdays and all to-morrows are in this house listening," said the
Secret Friend. "This is the place where time is without a name. Here the
beginning comes after the end. To-morrow we shall be born. Yesterday we
died. To-day was just a little passage built of twenty-four odd hours.
And now we will sing the Loud Song."

They were on the rocky path now, and they sang the Loud Song. Both
that path and that song go on for ever, and the words of the song are
like this:

There is no house like our house
Even in Heaven.
There is no family like our family
Even in Heaven.
There is no Country like our Country
Even in Heaven.
There is no sea like our sea
Even in Heaven.

Most families sing this song, more or less, but few could sing it so
loudly as this family did.

The dog Trelawney ran after the shadows of the seagulls.

There is the track my feet have worn
By which my fate may find me:
From that dim place where I was born
Those footprints run behind me.
Uncertain was the trail I left,
For--oh, the way was stormy;
But now this splendid sea has cleft
My journey from before me.

Three things the sea shall never end,
Three things shall mock its power:
My singing soul, my Secret Friend,
And this my perfect hour.

And you shall seek me till you reach
The tangled tide advancing,
And you shall find upon the beach
The traces of my dancing,
And in the air the happy speech
Of Secret Friends romancing.

For some minutes some one had been knocking on the door. The sound was
like an intruder in the Secret World, beckoning insistently to Jay. But
she took no notice of it until a loud voice said: "You need not think you
are paddling in golden seas and inaccessible to your relations, because
you are here, and I can see you through the window."

After a moment's confusion, Jay found that this was so, and she got up
and let Kew in.

"I will just ask you how you are," he said hurriedly. "And how things are
going in the Other World, and all that. But you needn't answer, because I
haven't much time, and I want very badly to talk about myself. I never
get a chance when Anonyma is there, and when I return to France (which is
likely to happen soon), I shan't find much chance to talk there. I am so
glad I am going back, I am so sick of hearing other people talk about
things that are not worth mentioning. Poor dear Anonyma, she meant all
this recent gaiety as a reward to me for war work dutifully done. But if
this be jam, give me my next pill unadorned. A motor tour combined with
Anonyma is tiring. If I were alone with Russ I might enjoy it."

"Who is Russ?"

"The owner of Christina, and Christina is the vehicle which contains us
during the search for you."

He became aware of the velvet face of Chloris, gazing at him from between
his knees.

"What does Chloris do while you are week-ending in Heaven. Do you take
her with you?"

"There is already a dog there, called Trelawney."

"By Jove, that would make a nice little clue for Anonyma. There can be
only one dog on the sea-coast called Trelawney. We could stop and ask
every dog we met what its name was. Besides, the name suggests
Cornwall. What breed is the dog? Look here, will you write the Family
a letter giving it a few neat clues for Anonyma? After all, we ought to
give her all the pleasure we can, I sometimes think we are a
disappointing family for her to have married. We lie to her, she lies
to us, her enthusiasms make us smile behind our hands, ours make her
yawn behind her notebook. Send us a good encouraging letter, addressed
to the house in Kensington. We always wire our address there as we
move. Give us details about Trelawney, and, if possible, the name of
the nearest post town. If we must lie, let us give all the pleasure we
can by doing so. Poor old Anonyma.

"It's getting dark, I must go back to the Family. I am as a babe in the
hands of Anonyma, and like a babe I promised her I would be back before
dark. Do you remember how we used to long to be lost after nightfall,
just for the dramatic effect? Yet we were awfully frightened of the dark.
Do you remember how we used to dare each other to get out of bed and run
three times round the night nursery? I have never felt so brave since, as
I used to feel as I jumped into bed conscious of an ordeal creditably
over. Why is bed such a safe place? I am not half so brave as I used to
be. I remember at the age of ten doing a thing that I have never dared to
do since. I sat in the bath with my back to the taps. Do you suppose the
innocent designer of baths meant everybody to sit like that, with a tap
looking over each shoulder? Taps are known to be savage brutes, and it is
everybody's instinct to sit the other way round, and keep an eye on the
danger. If I were as brave now as I was at ten, I could probably win the
War. Oh, Jay, I can't stop talking, I am so pleased to be nearly out of
the clutches of my relations."

"Are you sure you won't be killed?" asked Jay suddenly.

"I can't be," said Kew. "How could I be? I'm me. I'm not brave, and I
don't go to France with one eye on duty and the other on the
possibility of never coming back. I go because the crowd goes, and the
crowd--a rather shrunken crowd--will come back safe. I'm too average a
man to get killed."

"Don't you think all those million ghosts are thinking, 'What business
had Death to choose me?'" suggested Jay.

"No," said Kew. "I'm sure they know."

After a few seconds' pause he said, "By Jove, are you in fancy dress?"

"No. Why?"

"Why indeed. Why a kilt and yards of gaiters? Why a hat like a Colonial
horse marine?"

"Oh, this is the uniform of a bus-conductor," replied Jay.

Kew scanned it with distaste. Presently he said, "Don't you think
you'd better give it up? Buy a new hat with a day's earnings, and get
the sack."

"I can't quarrel with my bread and butter," said Jay.

"Surely this is only jam," said Kew. "You've got plenty of money of your
own for bread and butter."

"I haven't now," answered Jay. "I gave up having money when the
War started. Perhaps I chucked it into the Serpentine. Perhaps
not. I forget."

Kew got up slowly. "Well," he said, "sure you're all right? I must be
going. I don't know when the last train goes."

In London it is impossible to ignore the fact that you are late. The
self-righteous hands of clocks point out your guilt whichever way you
look. Your eye and your ear are accused on every side. You long for the
courteous clocklessness of the country; there, mercifully, the sun
neither ticks nor strikes, nor cavils at the minutes.

There was a crowd of home-goers at Brown Borough Church, and each 'bus as
it arrived was like the angel troubling the waters of Bethesda. There was
no hope for the old or timid. Kew was an expert in the small sciences of
London. He knew not only how to mount a 'bus, while others of his like
were trying four abreast to do the same, but also how to stand on a space
exactly half the size of his boot soles, without holding on. (This is
done, as you probably know too, by not looking out of the window.)

Kew had given up taxis and cigars in war-time. It was his pretence
never to do anything on principle, so he would have blushed if anybody
had commented on this ingenuous economy. The fact that he had joined
the Army the first day of the War was also, I think, a tender spot in
the conscience of Kew. A Victoria Cross would have been practically
unbearable, and even to be mentioned in despatches would have been a
most upsetting contradiction of that commonplace and unprincipled past
of which he boasted. He thought he was such a simple soul that he had
no motives or principles in anything that he did, but really he was
simpler than that. He was so simple that he did his best without
thinking about it. It certainly sounds rather a curious way to live in
the twentieth century.

"'Ere, you're seven standin' inside," said the gentleman 'bus--conductor,
when, after long sojourn in upper regions, he came down to his basement
floor. "Five standin' is all I'm supposed to 'ave, an' five standin' is
all I'll allow. Why should I get myself into trouble for 'avin' more'n
five standin', if five standin' is all I'm allowed to 'ave?"

In spite of a chorus of nervous assent from all his flock, and the
blushing disappearance of the two superfluous standers, the
'bus-conductor continued his lament in this strain. To the man with a
small but loud grievance, sympathy is a fatal offering.

The 'bus-conductor had a round red nose, and very defective teeth. Kew
studied him in a new light, for this was Jay's fellow-worker. Somehow it
seemed very regrettable.

"I wish I hadn't promised not to tell the Family," he thought.

He and Jay never broke their promises to each other, and there was a
tacit agreement that when they found it necessary to lie to each other,
they always gave each other warning. Where the rest of the world was
concerned, I am afraid they used their discretion in this matter.

"It ought to be stopped. The tactful foot of Family authority ought to
step on it."

He presented his penny angrily to the 'bus-conductor.

"I expect this sort of man asks Jay to walk out with him," he thought,
and with a cold glance took the ticket offered to him.

"Lucky I'm so utterly selfish," he thought, "or I should be
devilish worried."

His train was one which boasted a restaurant car, and Kew patronised
this institution. But when he was in the middle of cold meat, he thought:
"She is probably trying to live on twopence-halfpenny a week. Continual
tripe and onions."

So he refused pudding. The pudding, persistent as only a railway pudding
can be, came back incredulously three times. But Kew pushed it away.

"If I could get anybody outside the Family to use their influence, I
should be within the letter of the law. But I mostly know subalterns, and
nobody below a Brigadier would be likely to have much influence with Jay.
She'd probably talk down even a sergeant-major."

It seems curious that he should deplore the fact that Jay had turned into
a bus-conductor more deeply than he had deplored her experiments in
sweated employment. I think that a uniformed sister or wife is almost
unbearable to most men, except, perhaps, one in the nurse's uniform, of
which even St. Paul might have approved. The gaiters of the
'bus-conductor had shaken Kew to his foundations. The thought of the
skirt still brought his heart into his mouth. He was so lacking in the
modern mind that he still considered himself a gentleman. No Socialist,
speaking between clenched teeth in a strangled voice of largely
groundless protest, had ever gained the ear of Kew. He had never joined a
society of any sort. He had never attended a public meeting since he gave
up being a Salvationist at the age of ten.

"It must be stopped," he said, as he got out of the train. "I'll think of
a way in my bath to-morrow." This was always the moment he looked forward
to for inspirations.

Anonyma was observable as he walked from the station to the inn, craning
extravagantly from the sitting-room window. She came downstairs, and met
him at the door.

"Such a disaster," she said, and handed him a telegram.

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